Monooxygenation of small hydrocarbons catalyzed by bacterial cytochrome P450s

Abstract

Cytochrome P450s (P450s) catalyze the NAD(P)H/O 2 -dependent monooxygenation of less reactive organic molecules under mild conditions. The catalytic activity of bacterial P450s is very high compared with P450s isolated from animals and plants, and the substrate specificity of bacterial P450s is also very high. Accordingly, their catalytic activities toward nonnative substrates are generally low especially toward small hydrocarbons. However, mutagenesis approaches have been very successful for engineering bacterial P450s for the hydroxylation of small hydrocarbons. On the other hand, “decoy” molecules, whose structures are very similar to natural substrates, can be used to trick the substrate recognition of bacterial P450s, allowing the P450s to catalyze oxidation reactions of nonnative substrates without any substitution of amino acid residues in the presence of decoy molecules. Thus, the hydroxylation of small hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane and benzene can be catalyzed by P450BM3, a long-alkyl-chain hydroxylase, using substrate misrecognition of P450s induced by decoy molecules. Furthermore, a number of H 2 O 2 -dependent bacterial P450s can catalyze the peroxygenation of a variety of nonnative substrates through a simple substrate–misrecognition trick, in which catalytic activities and enantioselectivity are dependent on the structure of decoy molecules.